The Blessing

It isn’t just Nanny who finds it difficult in France when Grace and her young son Sigi are finally able to join her dashing aristocratic husband Charles-Edouard after the war. For Grace is out of her depth among the fashionably dressed and immaculately coiffured French women, and shocked by their relentless gossiping and bedhopping. When she discovers her husband’s tendency to lust after every pretty girl he sees, it looks like trouble. And things get even more complicated when little Sigi steps in.

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Publisher's Summary

It isn’t just Nanny who finds it difficult in France when Grace and her young son, Sigi, are finally able to join her dashing aristocratic husband, Charles-Edouard, after the war. For Grace is out of her depth among the fashionably dressed and immaculately coiffured French women, and shocked by their relentless gossiping and bed hopping. When she discovers her husband’s tendency to lust after every pretty girl he sees, it looks like trouble. And things get even more complicated when little Sigi steps in.

The Blessing is a hilarious tale of love, fidelity, and the English abroad.

Though not as good as Love in a Cold Climate and the Pursuit of Love, the Blessing is nevertheless a charming and enjoyable book that has many of the same themes. An unsophisticated young English woman, Grace, falls for a handsome, suave, wealthy Frenchman, Charles-Eduoard. They marry and much fun is had at satirising French ideas about marital fidelity or rather infidelity and differences in life-style and attitudes between France and Britain in the 1940s. The son of the union, Siggi, is quite a character and his ploys to manipulate his parents provide funny scenes as does the prejudices of his nanny about French food.

The book flags a little during part two but overall is well worth listening to as the writing is lively and the characters endearing in their vanities and foibles.

Jenny Agutter is a splendid narrator giving many different voices to the characters on both sides of the Channel.

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